Poll: Will You Subscribe to CBS All Access for ‘Star Trek: Discovery’?

Ending a 12-year break, the ‘Star Trek’ franchise returns to TV this fall, but you’ll have to pay to watch it. Although CBS will air the premiere episode on regular broadcast on September 24th, all subsequent episodes will be exclusive to the CBS All Access streaming platform. Will you pay for another subscription service just for one show?

To be fair here, CBS All Access is also loaded with lots of vintage TV content, and already has a notable exclusive show with ‘The Good Fight’, the spinoff to ‘The Good Wife’. Nevertheless, the new ‘Star Trek’ series will be by far the highest-profile programming to hit the platform, and CBS expects it to drive a major surge in subscriptions.

Those subscriptions run $5.99 per month for limited commercial interruption, or $9.99/month commercial-free. Considering that Netflix also costs $9.99 and offers vastly more original content, this doesn’t seem like a great deal if all you’re interested in is ‘Star Trek’.

On the other hand, ‘Star Trek’ has a huge and rabid fan base that may consider $6 to $10 a small inconvenience to get a new ‘Trek’ series on their TVs.

The smartest play here seems to be to watch the premiere episode on broadcast and then decide if the show is worth paying for. That’s what I plan to do. CBS All Access also offers a free one-month trial, which will get you through the first few episodes.

Will You Subscribe to CBS All Access for 'Star Trek: Discovery'?

Yes, I'm a major Trekkie and wouldn't miss this for anything!

I'll do it, but I won't be happy about paying for another subscription service.

I'll watch the premiere on regular broadcast and then decide if it's worth paying for more.

About Josh Zyber

Josh Zyber is a veteran movie and video disc reviewer from Laserdisc to DVD and beyond. He's previously written for DVDFile.com, DVDTalk.com and Home Theater magazine. These days, he wastes most of his free time managing this blog and writing the occasional Blu-ray review for High-Def Digest.

William Henley

Doesn’t your Netflix subscription show the local content of the country you are in, not the Country your account is in? I got a VPN service, I wonder if I can access the show through it. Hmmm, I may have to look into that one!

Netflix has recently increased their VPN shenanigans security, but until recently, a friend of mine just hopped between Netflix Belgium, Netflix America and Netflix UK whenever he wanted to watch a certain show that was not available in this or that region.

David W.

I’m not going to pay for an extra service, but I will watch the pilot to see if it interests me.

Excuse me if this has been mentioned somewhere else, but I am curious to know how the average viewer would be expected to watch CBS All Access or even the upcoming Disney streaming service on their TV in their living room or bed room? Right now, Netflx, Hulu, and Amazon can be watched because most smart TVs and smart STBs have an app that can access them, but these are new services not supported by anything yet, to my knowledge. Won’t this be limit people to watching the services on their computers? Maybe if the smart device has a web browser they can watch it.

David W.

I forgot to mention tablets and smart phones as a possible way of watching them. Those ways of watching doesn’t make sense either as that’s not really on an TV either and again the average viewer won’t want to watch a program on a small screen.

“How can you see it?
The service can be accessed easily on major devices, including AppleTV, Android, Roku, iPhone, iPad, Xbox One, Windows 10, Google Chromecast, FireTV, and PS4. You can also watch on smartphones and tablets through the CBS app.”

William Henley

Many newer SmartTVs also have Chromecast or Roku built in, and my Chromecast TV just took an update yesteday and now has apps locally, including CBS.

I am thinking that the only device I have that does NOT support CBS is my UHD Blu-Ray player. My Android phone, tablet, Fire tablet (which is android), NVidia Shield (which is android), chromecast (which is android), PS4, (not sure about the PS3) and Roku all support it.

This is, of course, considering I want to use it.

CBS has added many new platforms in the past year preparing for this.

Bryan

I’m a huge Trekkie … love all the series (yes – even Enterprise) but I’ve just reached the limit of services that I’ll shell out for. I really don’t understand the logic behind this move, as all it’s going to do is lead to massive pirating.

William Henley

The logic is actually quite sound – for any of the major networks, a show pretty much has to pull in 5 million or more viewers in prime time to be profitable. The last two Star Trek Series have averaged between 1.5 million to 4 million at the max. Putting it on a streaming platform ensures that the show will last more than 1 or 2 seasons.

My problem is that CBS chose the wrong platform.

Deaditelord

I don’the watch a lot of TV shows, but I was interested in Star Trek: Dscovery… until I found out about CBS’ dick move of locking it behind their wholly unnecessary paid service. With Netflix and Crunchyroll covering all my regular TV watching (except for sports), I’m loathe to drop money for an additional service. If I decide to watch the show, it will be at the end of the season when I can subscribe for one month (or ideally use a free trial) to binge watch it.

If each network wants to charge a separate fee for content as opposed to licensing their content to a shared provider like Netflix, then it’s going to ruin the cost savings for cord cutters. I just don’t see this strategy working.

If it is on Xbox Market place / iTunes, I would probably purchase it, but I won’t pay for another service. Netflix and Hulu are my limit. Same goes for Disney if they remove their programming from Netflix, I just won’t watch it.

Les

So, is it just going to show up for purchase on a streaming service like Vudu or Apple as a Season purchase or next day purchase? I might be more interested in just purchasing it outright on Digital HD if it isn’t outrageously expensive.

If not, then I will subscribe to CBS All Access . . . AGAIN!!

CBS already got several months of All Access out of me already (meaning $) because when the original announcement came out about STD launching, I signed on to CBS All Access at the end of 2016 or early 2017. Wasn’t the original launch date in early 2017, then it was bumped to May 2017, then it was bumped again to Sept 2017. During a portion of this time, I was paying for CBS All Access. Finally a few months back I discontinued service with the thought that I would re-subscribe when the actual STD launched.

William Henley

If its available as a season pass on iTunes or Vudu or Amazon, I will certainly go that route. There are a few other shows I do that with after I cut the cord that are not included with Prime, Hulu or Netflix. $25 for a season in HD is significantly cheaper than even a single month of cable, and even all of my shows combined are less than a month of cable.

Lou Bitgood

“I believe he means television, sir. That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year 2040.” — Lt. Cmdr. Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Neutral Zone” (1988)

Star Trek: Discovery is emblematic of the trends that very well may render Data’s description-prediction true, perhaps even usher it in well ahead of schedule. A norm of à la carte subscriptions to the equivalents of individual channels/networks, as opposed to the à prix fixe model of a cable or satellite subscription to a variety of channels (or better yet, getting them for free over conventional broadcast) can. in the long run, only hurt the medium and whatever it’s transforming into. It also appears that Discovery relies heavily on the serial format, which has become oversaturated; while that format has enjoyed a fair amount of popularity, I expect it to hurt programs in the long run. Long-form stories are hard to get into if one hasn’t been with the story from the beginning or had a lapse; furthermore, it’s more appealing and practical to rewatch favorite individual episodes of episodic series than to either rewatch selected chapters of a long-form story or else rewatch what amounts to a movie of some twelve to twenty-some hours in length.

As a faithful Trekkie, I’m intrigued and look forward to watching the premiere. But I also remember (what was for me) the débâcle of Enterprise, which I gave up on. (I haven’t bothered with any of the reboot movies beyond the first, either.) Rumblings about changes in behind-the-scenes personnel and changes in direction make me uneasy about Discovery’s prospects as a quality inheritor of Gene Roddenberry’s legacy. I’ll keep an open mind, but it’s terribly unlikely that even a very good premiere episode will have me subscribing to the service. (I don’t subscribe to any streaming service.) I may watch Discovery another way eventually.

DaMac80

I really don’t want to support shows being permanently exclusive to a subscription service, so I’ll wait a while and hope for a disc release. If it never comes I’ll subscribe long enough to watch it down the line, when it matters less to their plans.

Jjason nickerson

I am a huge trek fan. That being said I will not subscribe to CBS all access and shell out money to this corporate hijacked Star Trek. Everyone but the US AND Canada can watch it on Netflix?? Come on really??. The second reason being the situation with “Axanar” and the new CBS fan film guidelines. The heart and soul of trek has always been the fans. Pretty much ripped our guts out on that one. Soooo fans donate a huge amount of money to a project they are excited about only to have it squashed And then ask for money for a subscription to a trek they know nothing about???! No thank you. I refuse the junk popcorn scifi entertainment you are trying to push. End rant

William Henley

The people behind Axanar have no one to blame but themselves. They pushed the definition of a “fan film” beyond the breaking point and stood to make a profit on an IP they had no legal right to use. Their actions begged for a response from CBS Films and Paramount, and that’s what they got. No corporation in the world would let them get away with it.

Bill C

CBS has severely miscalculated with this show. I’ve been saying it for 6 months. This show has epic failure written all over it. The death nail for me is this girl that is supposed to be Spock’s adopted sister. That is absolutely retarded. The Orville is the show to watch.

P.S. There should have been a choice in the poll that said, “Are you going to pirate it on-line?” That would have further drove the “No, I’m not watching on all access.” percentage up.

wayne foster

Cbs all access sucks they are missing alot of episodes have some numbered wrong and missing some spinoff series at least one or 2. Unless they improve it then I have little reason to watch it I want to see the new star trek but if I don’t like it I will cancel my subscription cause that’s all I have interest in right now. It’s too bad cause there are alot of good shows but for a service called all access it’s more like limited access and the support person I talked to really didn’t understand what the service was tried telling me it was just a few episodes of each show. That’s actually the free part not the all access part.

I’ve been a huge Star Trek fan ever since I can remember. My mom likes to tell me that I preferred it to cartoons when I was a toddler in the late 60s.

If I like the premier I’ll wait until the first season ends before I order the service, but they have a pretty high bar to clear since I’ve been spoiled with Game of Thrones these past few years. HBO Now has enough quality content that I’m willing to shell out that $15 a month even when GoT isn’t airing.

That being said, I recently canceled HBO Now via Google and went with an HBO channel subscription via Amazon due to the poor streaming quality and random drop issue with the HBO Now app on my Xbox One. Amazon Video has a much better quality stream and drops are extremely rare.

J.L. Higgins

Bill

CBS seems to think that they can use this new Star Trek to lure people to their streaming service. I guess they don’t know about Voyager. Star Trek Voyager was supposed to be the big flagship show on the newly launched Paramount TV network back in the 90s. While the series did survive, it never was the big draw for the new network which eventually disappeared. I fear that ST: Discovery will likely meet the same fate. One series does not a successful network make.

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